Conventional slot machines contain three or more reels, each having a set of symbols around its periphery. The reels are rotated and randomly stopped, and the combination of symbols across one or more paylines determines the award paid to the player. A conventional reel assembly includes a stepper motor that rotates a light plastic circular frame having a replaceable reel strip affixed around the periphery of the frame. Pulses are applied to the stepper motor to cause the stepper motor to rotate through any amount of rotation. The reel strips are translucent and are typically backlit with one or more conventional light bulbs. U.S. Pat. No. 5,839,957, incorporated herein by reference, describes an example of a reel assembly.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,388,829, incorporated herein by reference, provides an example of a reel assembly having light bulbs for backlighting the reel strip. If the slot machine is the type where three adjacent symbols on a reel strip are illuminated, three light bulbs may be fixed in a position to optimally illuminate the three symbols. In some cases, each light bulb is surrounded by walls that prevent the light from illuminating symbols other than the one directly in front of the light bulb. If the reel strip were replaced by a different reel strip having larger or smaller symbol positions, the backlight would not be optimum, since the backlights would not be centered behind the symbols on the new reel strip.
Additionally, such simple light bulbs used as backlights are constantly on and provide no information to the players.